Fighting Stigma 2020: Synopsis of the Presentation of the Yves Pelicier Prize Lecture at the World Congress of Social Psychiatry, Bucharest, October 2019

Abstract

The United Nations has recently recognized the magnitude and severity of mental health problems and included the need to deal with them among its universal development goals. The main obstacle to achieving these goals is the stigma and discrimination because of mental illness which is still prevailing in all parts of the world. The presentation referred to the excellent programs against stigma that have started in some countries but recognized that in most countries of the world stigma of mental illness is still not effectively tackled. The main reason for this is that the paradigms which have been the basis for national efforts to combat stigma are no longer valid so that progress now depends on developing and applying approaches different from those used so far. The presentation examined the current paradigms of fighting stigma and proposed their replacements.